1.5TB of Webb Telescope Data Made Available for Public Use
Open science just got a stellar upgrade. On Thursday, NASA-backed COSMOS-Web made 1.5 terabytes of the James Webb Space Telescope's observational data available online, free of charge. It's the biggest trove of raw deep-space data ever opened to the public at a given time.
COSMOS-Web, the Webb telescope's continuation of Hubble's 590-orbit Cosmic Evolution Survey, involves more than 200 researchers from a dozen countries. The project aims to expand astronomers' understanding of the Reionization Era (the billion years immediately following the Big Bang), track the evolution of massive galaxies in the universe's first two billion years, and unravel dark matter's entanglement with visible matter within galaxies.
Between Webb's 2021 launch and June 2025, COSMOS-Web has conducted over 250 hours of observations across 150 visits. The result is a vast raw data catalog containing "photometry, structural measurements, redshifts, and physical parameters for nearly 800,000 galaxies," per the COSMOS-Web team. Accompanying the catalog are mosaics from Webb's NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument), which together mapped a total of 0.74 square degrees of sky—roughly the area of four full moons.
COSMOS-Web NIRCam mosaic (upper left) with zoom-ins to the region surrounding the COSMOS-Web Ring (upper right). Credit: COSMOS-Web
Though the data in COSMOS2025 was made available as soon as it was obtained, "only those with specialized technical knowledge and supercomputer access are able to process them into a form useful for scientific analyses," the team said. In contrast, the catalog consists of what was left after COSMOS-Web sifted out artifacts, subtracted background noise, reduced duplicate data, and improved the astrometry. This doesn't just make the data more accessible to research institutions and citizen scientists; it also sets a foundation for calibrating future surveys and observatories.
"In today's climate, open, accessible science is more important than ever," COSMOS-Web's statement reads. "Anyone in the world can now access the same catalogs and images used by the COSMOS collaboration…This collective spirit has been remarkably successful in continuously reinvigorating the team over the past twenty years."
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